Luceo photographer David Banks and I spent October 27 through November 12 in Central Mexico on a trip dedicated solely to photo-taking. (Y’know, less of the emailing with editors and archiving and doing the not-so-fun deskwork involved in running a business, and more of the visual feasting.) The past few weeks since I’ve returned, I’ve mulled over and waded through (literally) thousands of images from the trip and I’m excited to finally unload them on you. Check back often in the next two weeks, to see where my camera led me through Mexico.

Mexico was nothing like I imagined. I’m not sure if it’s popular culture or my own imagination, but Central Mexico was neither Cancun, nor Tijuana. It is mountainous and so rich in history and culture and art that I was left dumbfounded and tongue-tied. I’ve found the tongue-tied-ness to be an uncomfortable familiarity in many of my travels. When I first arrive in a new place and am at a loss for language, my photography is hesitant and guarded. Part of me wants me to take photos of everything foreign before it becomes more commonplace in my mind as the trip goes on. The other part of me, which often wins in the first days, lumps my eyes with my tongue. I do not speak Spanish well enough to speak to any Spanish-speaker in a meaningful way, which makes me much more hesitant to take photos. I’m uncomfortable without my voice. I cannot explain my purpose or who I am to the people I encounter and that leaves me unevenly-footed and actually changes my vision a bit.

Many of the photos from my first days in Oaxaca are of walls. Photographing the layers of paint and history and decay and culture was natural because of the beauty of the textures and colors, but it also gave my brain a chance to soak in the scene without intruding in a new place where I was mute.
As I became more comfortable wandering the streets with my camera, my photographs shifted back to the people, yet as the days passed, I kept taking photos of the walls still –retreating back to their silent safety from time to time. I was still drawn to the crumbling layers of paint from hundreds of years in the colonial cities we wandered. Whenever I leave the United States and its too-familiar, stale modern architecture, the breadth of history just in the very infrastructure elsewhere tastes so foreign and delicious.
While I take photographs like these often, I rarely give them any value. They’re usually my “bored photos.” I’m happy to share them with you today because they feel bigger than bored. They helped my tongue untie, and my over-stimulated eyes meditate on the basics of visual language– color, shape, texture– and beyond, the culture of a new place. And, as you’ll see in the next posts of essays from my trip, my photography from Mexico is much more chaotic and cluttered than I consider my visual style, so these photos feel like a nice complement to the images that feel a little foreign to me. (I’d love to call this series The Walls of Oaxaca, as I’d first intended, because good God do I love me some alliteration, but my eyes were drawn to these scenes after I left Oaxaca. They’re in Mexico City, San Miguel de Allende, San Martin, and other villages along the way.)

Luceo photographer David Banks and I spent October 27 through November 12 in Central Mexico on a trip dedicated solely to photo-taking. (Y'know, less of the emailing with editors and archiving and doing the not-so-fun deskwork involved in running a business, and more of the visual feasting.) The past few weeks since I've returned, ...